Wild Chocolate - by Rowan Jacobsen (Hardcover)

About the Book

From James Beard Award-winner Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world's finest bar.

Book Synopsis

2025 JAMES BEARD AWARD FINALIST
"Inspiring." -MARK BITTMAN
"One of the best stories under the sun." -JOSÉ ANDRÉS

From James Beard Award-winner Rowan Jacobsen, the thrilling story of the farmers, activists, and chocolate makers fighting all odds to revive ancient cacao and produce the world's finest bar.

When Rowan Jacobsen first heard of a chocolate bar made entirely from wild Bolivian cacao, he was skeptical. The waxy mass-market chocolate of his childhood had left him indifferent to it, and most experts believed wild cacao had disappeared from the rainforest centuries ago. But one dazzling bite of Cru Sauvage was all it took. Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen travels the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America to find the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system that long ago abandoned wild and heirloom cacao in favor of high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by Big Chocolate.

What he found was a cacao renaissance. As his guides pulled the last vestiges of ancient cacao back from the edge of extinction, they'd forged an alternative system in the process-one that is bringing prosperity back to local economies, returning fertility to the land, and protecting it from the rampages of cattle farming. All the while, a new generation of bean-to-bar chocolate makers are racing to get their
hands on these rare varietals and produce extraordinary chocolate displaying a diversity of flavors no one had thought possible. Full of vivid characters, vibrant landscapes, and surprising history, Wild Chocolate promises to be as rich, complex, and addictive as good chocolate itself.

Review Quotes

"[This] engaging narrative history doubles as an adventure tale, taking readers from Montezuma's treasure vaults to shrewd profiteers' warehouses. Recent years have seen a reclamation of cacao farming by small, sustainable, organic farmers using traditional methods but also modern brokers to bring their products to a worldwide audience, fueling a cacao renaissance." --Washington Post

"Forget Dairy Milk-it's a bar made from wild Bolivian cacao you really want. In this delicious adventure, American food writer Rowan Jacobsen travels through the Amazon and Central American rainforests in search of its source . . . . A wonderful blend of history, ecology, sociology and economics. This book promises to make 'choconerds' out of its readers: you'll never look at a tub of Celebrations in the same way again." --The Guardian

"[A] masterwork . . . The greatest appeal of Wild Chocolate comes in its slow, page-by-page seduction. After absorbing Jacobsen's prose about bars produced from wild cacao, you can't help but want to try some yourself." --Tim Carman, American Scholar

"I've always trusted Rowan Jacobsen's sense of taste. When [he] turns his palate and pen to an obscure aspect of our food culture, there's a good reason. In his latest book . . . he weaves his deeply researched findings into a delicious tale." --Seven Days

"A delightful read, both for the travel writing and the deep dive into the art of chocolate and its recent resurrection." --Daily KOS

"Thrilling . . . Jacobsen draws out the complex global connections-and, often, corporate harms-underpinning the chocolate industry without losing sight of its pleasures . . . Readers will be eager to sink their teeth into this." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A spirited quest for the perfect cacao bean... a skilled food historian with a sharp eye for the economics of the delicious, [Jacobsen] also peppers his prose with interesting tidbits...A treat for literate, adventure-loving foodies, best accompanied by a bespoke chocolate bar." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"An amazing adventure through forests, down rivers, and into the depths of history to uncover the beauty and culture of cacao, truly the food of the gods. Rowan Jacobsen is a master storyteller, and Wild Chocolate tells one of the best stories under the sun." --José Andres, chef and humanitarian

"Chocolate is delicious, but not simple: It can be a source of impoverishment and deforestation, or a force for environmental and cultural regeneration; that's a choice. Wild Chocolate provides an inspiring look at the people in the American tropics who are doing it right." --Mark Bittman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING and ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK

"I learned so much! Wild Chocolate offers a rare intoxicating glimpse into a fascinating and notoriously opaque supply chain. Whether traveling up slender tributaries in the Amazon, bushwhacking through Central American rainforest, or providing front row seats to a master producer casting bars, Rowan Jacobsen transforms the quest for heritage chocolate into a swashbuckling adventure that will enrich every bite of chocolate you consume." --Benjamin Lorr, author of THE SECRET LIFE OF GROCERIES

"Jacobsen is among our best writers documenting the connections between delectable foodstuffs and the besieged ecosystems and communities that underpin them. In his latest, he takes us on a journey from chocolate's origins to its current crisis to its imperiled but potentially delicious future. If you doubt that life without good chocolate is worth living, this is your book." --Tom Philpott, author of PERILOUS BOUNTY

"If chocolate is your thing then this is your book-a Rosetta Stone for decoding everything this ancient and fascinating culinary tradition brings to the table." --Paul Greenberg, New York Times bestselling author of FOUR FISH

"Rowan Jacobsen is America's most trusted and lyrical food writer, and Wild Chocolate transcends the eloquence of all his other books. We will never see nor taste chocolate in the same way again after this olfactory odyssey through its pleasures and perils." --Gary Nabhan, MacArthur Fellow and author of AGAVE SPIRITS

"Written with the detail and deep research I've come to expect from Jacobsen, this book is an invitation to consider a familiar food in a new way and to get to know chocolate intimately. It will leave you drooling and ready to commit to seeking out these experiences-and melting bites of rare chocolate-yourself." --Sarah Lohman, author of ENDANGERED EATING

About the Author

Rowan Jacobsen is the author of eight books, including the James Beard Award-winning A Geography of Oysters and 2021's Truffle Hound. He has written for the New York Times, Harper's, Outside, Food & Wine, Forbes, Mother Jones, Scientific American, Smithsonian, Vice, and others, and he appears regularly in Best American Science & Nature Writing and Best Food Writing. He has been an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow, a McGraw Center fellow, and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. The creator and host of the 2022 podcast series "Wild Chocolate," he lives in Vermont.